“Martial Law in the Streets of Toronto”:G20 Security and State Violence

Abstract

This paper examines the events, microgeography and broader context of the effective siege of downtown Toronto by Canadian security forces during the June 2010 meeting of the G20, and the unprecedented assault on peaceful protestors and innocent bystanders alike. An extraordinary clampdown of Toronto streets was organized by integrated security forces at the international, federal, provincial and local scales, leading to the arrest and jailing of a larger number of people (overwhelmingly released without charges) than in any other event in Canadian history. Whereas popular consternation emerged immediately against police brutality with many commentators aghast that this could happen in “Toronto the good,” suggesting that this represented an exceptional event, this paper argues that to a significant degree the crisis in the streets was precipitated by the security forces themselves, an argument buttressed by the refusal of the Canadian government to investigate the events. The paper connects the G20 to the larger issues of global political economic power and urban securitization, and puts the Toronto G20 police riot against protestors, if that is what it was, in the context of state power and the state's claimed monopoly over violence. Far from an exceptional event, this repressive assault expressed the DNA of capitalist state behavior and the selectivity of its targeted social violence.